docs: def execQuery(self, eventRegistry,
              sortBy = "cosSim", sortByAsc = False,
              returnInfo = None,
              maxItems = -1):
          """
          @param eventRegistry: instance of EventRegistry class. used to obtain the necessary data
  
          @param sortBy: order in which event articles are sorted. Options: none (no specific sorting), id (internal id), date (published date), cosSim (closeness to event centroid), sourceImportance (manually curated score of source importance - high value, high importance), sourceImportanceRank (reverse of sourceImportance), sourceAlexaGlobalRank (global rank of the news source), sourceAlexaCountryRank (country rank of the news source), socialScore (total shares on social media), facebookShares (shares on Facebook only)
          @param sortByAsc: should the results be sorted in ascending order (True) or descending (False)
          @param returnInfo: what details should be included in the returned information
          @param maxItems: maximum number of items to be returned. Used to stop iteration sooner than results run out
          """
          self._er = eventRegistry
          self._articlePage = 0
          self._totalPages = None
          # if we want to return only a subset of items:
          self._maxItems = maxItems
          self._currItem = 0
  
          self._articlesSortBy = sortBy
          self._articlesSortByAsc = sortByAsc
          self._returnInfo = returnInfo
  
          # download the list of article uris
          self._articleList = []
          return self